


Killer

by Delphi



Series: Snape of St. Brutal's [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adultery, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Domestic Violence, Drama, Dubious Consent, Gen, M/M, Murder, Reform School, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2013-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-26 13:54:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/966708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Severus's opinion, no one would make such a fuss about murder being illegal if everyone didn't think about committing it now and then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Killer

A book told him how to kill his father.

It entered his life by divine providence the summer he was eleven, when he found it at the Great Hangleton Railway Station shortly before changing trains on the way home from his uncle and aunt's house in Witting. There it was, sitting on a bench with no one else about, and Severus wandered over to pick it up because having something new to read was always preferable to boredom. 

_Riddle's Modern Herbal_ , the cover said in silver letters. Severus was momentarily disappointed. He had hoped it might be a dirty book, like the one he had found at the Witting station last December. Nonetheless, it had a cloth cover, which appealed to him, and despite the title, the book seemed to be very old. The pages were yellow around the edges, and the type was blurry. It was stitched together inside rather than glued, and although it didn't have a card pocket, it smelled like a library.

He stroked the spine, where silver leaves were stamped in a neat line, and then he took the book back to where his parents were waiting on the platform and flipped through it to distract himself from the fact that he needed to wee. It was a half-hour wait in Great Hangleton, but his father never let anyone go to the toilet in case they missed the train. The book had quite good drawings of various plants, and beneath each one was a name in Latin.

 _Ocimum basilicum_ , _Urtica dioica_ , _Taraxacum officinale_.

His father's hand came suddenly into view. 

Severus flinched and tried to draw back, but his father caught hold of the book. It was bent one way and then the other as his father peered first at the cover and then at the pages. 

"What's this?"

It was one of those questions that wasn't actually meant to be answered. Severus held on to the book but resisted the urge to pull away, knowing that doing so would only result in the book being confiscated—or worse, thrown in the bin. 

"Flowers," his father said flatly, looking at the diagram of a daisy.

Severus's cheeks went red and something squirmed in his gut. Something in his father's voice made him embarrassed, but he didn't know why. It wasn't a baby book, and it wasn't a dirty one either. _So?_ he very much wanted to say, and maybe he would get away with it because they were in public. Maybe not, though. He had been belted in the station toilet before—once for whingeing, and then a second time because while his father had been busy spanking him, they had in fact missed the train just like he'd said.

"Leave it be, Toby," his mother said wearily. "If it keeps him quiet..."

She sounded as though she had a headache, which she usually did after visiting Uncle Ken. The big house in Witting was full of barking dogs and squalling, sticky babies, and everything there smelled of nappies. Severus didn't like it any better than she did. Uncle Ken always asked him questions about football, and Aunt Nancy called him Steven. 

His father gave him a long warning look, but relinquished the book with a little shove. Severus stumbled back before catching his balance. A flash of anger shot through him, but he was careful to keep his face perfectly blank, lest he be accused of having an attitude. His bladder was starting to hurt. 

He watched his father take out a cigarette and light it, and when he was quite certain the conversation was over, he opened the book at random to the page on _Asphodelus_ and read in silence until the train arrived.

* * *

"Does he hit your mother?"

Professor McGonagall was the first and only person to ask him that. They were standing in the street in front of his house, and an enormous bearded man called Mr. Hagrid was putting Severus's suitcase in the boot of the panel van that was going to take him away. No one was watching from the front room window. The curtains were drawn.

The policemen had asked Severus if his father ever beat him—not a spanking, they said, but with his hand closed. The doctor had asked him if his father ever touched his privates. 

He hated her suddenly, fiercely, where before he had been ambivalent. She didn't sound angry or eager or embarrassed like the others had. Her voice was calm and tired, as though she already knew the answer. His face burned and his stomach lurched. Something shook him, and the next thing he knew, he was lunging at her throat with both hands.

"That's not nice!" Mr. Hagrid boomed, catching Severus by the back of his trousers and lifting him off his feet as if he weighed nothing at all.

Severus was flung wailing into the back of the van. The door slammed shut behind him. There was no handle on the inside. He kicked futilely at the divider with both feet, thrashing in an ecstatic torrent of rage. The van started with a growl, and Severus slid off the seat when the vehicle lurched forward. He shouted again for good measure, banging his head against the divider until it hurt.

No one told him to get up, not in all the five hours it took to drive from Cokeworth to St. Brutus's. He sat on the floor, wedged between the seats with nothing to do as Mr. Hagrid drove in silence, and when Professor McGonagall took out a paperback to read somewhere past Kendal, Severus's burning hatred gave way grudgingly to a glimmer of admiration for her cruelty.

* * *

_The leaves and berries of Atropa belladonna are highly toxic and must be handled with care_ , the book said.

Severus had never truly expected to find anything special in Cokeworth. The town was built from concrete and brick, and the only plants he had ever noticed were the weeds growing up in the pavement cracks and the sad, drooping flowers in the neighbours' window boxes. Writing his own book about local plants—albeit in a stapled bundle of lined paper pinched on the last day of school—was only something to keep him busy and out of the house during the summer.

He had indulged in a few make-believe daydreams of finding something rare or valuable. Saffron, maybe, or even a new plant that no one had ever seen before. He would make a lot of money and everyone would be jealous. At the very least, he thought his friend Lily might be impressed when she got back from her camping holiday to find that he had written a book.

Yet neither fantasy could compare to the marvel of what he found growing in the shady corner of an overgrown lot. He looked from the pages of _Riddle's Modern Herbal_ to the ragged little shrub with its long leaves and purple flowers and then back again to make absolutely certain. 

It was poison.

The thought filled him with hot excitement. He was too old for cartoons and comic books, but up until that moment he had still imagined poison to be something half-mythical, green or red or black, smoking in a vial marked with a skull and crossbones. Only here it was, right behind the off-license.

Severus looked around at the rest of the tangled plants. There had been a house here once, when he was very little, but they had knocked it down years ago. This had been a garden, although now the grass was up to Severus's knees and the ground was littered with empty bottles and crisp packets. 

_Deadly Nightshade_ , he titled the next blank page in his book. He drew the plant as best he could, and then he wrote neatly below: _For Enemies_.

* * *

"Do you ever think about hurting anyone?"

The thing to remember at St. Brutus's was that every question was secretly a trap. No one ever really wanted to know how your day had been, or how you were feeling, or which class was your favourite. They only wanted to know if you were going to cause trouble.

For example, if Severus were stupid, then he would have answered the question honestly. Yes, he thought about hurting people. Nearly everyone did, obviously. At the same time, if he were even more stupid—that was to say, new to these little chats in Professor McGonagall's office—then he might have said no, of course not, and she would have had proof that he was a liar.

As it was, he shrugged.

Professor McGonagall steepled her fingers and peered at him over the rims of her spectacles.

He shrugged again and sighed. "Sometimes I think about punching Potter in the face."

That was the right answer. He could tell by the way her shoulders relaxed. She never wrote anything down while he was in her office, but he could always hear her pen start scratching the moment he left.

"And why is that?" she asked.

"On general principle," Severus said. 

She gave him a censuring look, but he thought she had found it funny.

In truth, he had even wondered once or twice whether he could possibly get away with killing James Potter. He suspected he could, if he were careful. This was a reformatory, and he was hardly the only one who hated Potter for his good looks and his posh accent, and for the way he shouted for everyone to muck in during games. _Snivellus_ , Potter called him, always with a smile on his face, as though they were sharing a joke. _Don't be a moaner, Snivellus_.

This wouldn't be the debacle with his father again. No one could say he was the only one with a motive. 

"So why haven't you?" Professor McGonagall asked. 

Severus, momentarily distracted by the thought of other suspects, stumbled into the trap.

"Because it's wrong."

Professor McGonagall looked at him over her spectacles again. 

He sighed again, more heavily this time, and slumped in his chair. "Because I would get in trouble. Because it would be more bother than it's worth. He'll be gone soon, anyhow."

That was the worst thing about Potter: he wasn't even supposed to be here. All the teachers felt sorry for him, and the headmaster most of all, because Potter had never meant to kill anyone. In Severus's private opinion, being stupid enough to kill someone by accident hardly made you superior, but that was not the prevailing attitude. According to the stories, Potter and a friend at his last school had lured another boy out to the woods at night as part of a prank, and the boy had fallen over some rocks and hit his head and died. Potter had got a reduced sentence because he had run to get help, even if it was too late. 

"Does it bother you to think about Mr. Potter going home?"

What she was really asking was if it bothered him that he wasn't going home. He shrugged yet again, but sincerely this time. He didn't know. He rather liked it here, or at least he liked it better than anywhere else he had been, but that was the wrong answer.

She did not press him for a reply, although he suspected she would write down something anyhow. "How do you stop yourself from giving him a punch on the nose when you want to?"

"I think about other things," he said. He had got in the habit of biting the base of his right forefinger very hard whenever he had a fit of anger. It felt good to feel the flesh between his teeth and dig in until the hot wave passed. He had developed two calluses there in the exact shape of his teeth, and they grew red and chapped when the weather was cold, but no one seemed to have noticed. "I'll think about the book I'm reading. Or town weekends."

The problem was that Severus would not have found it remotely satisfying to kill Potter outright—to poison him, for instance, or to make it look like he had hanged himself. When Potter made him angry, all he wanted to do was wipe that smile off his face. He wanted to smash Potter's teeth in and make him cry and piss himself in fear. That, he couldn't get away with. There would be no hiding the noise, and even if he could manage that, his hands would be bruised and betray him.

Potter, for all his loathsomeness, wasn't worth a life sentence.

* * *

The berries appeared in September, green and hard at first, and then red as cherries, and finally shiny, black and ripe. There were six of them in all, and each one popped with a satisfying squelch between Severus's thumb and forefinger. The juice dripped into the half-empty bottle, running dark down the sides before disappearing into the amber whisky.

Severus laid the pulpy remains on a dish towel and was careful not to lick his fingers clean or wipe them on his trousers. It was suppertime on a Saturday, but the house was dark and empty. A raw chicken sat on the counter, and there was broken glass on the floor. There was blood too—gummy, coin-sized splotches leading into the downstairs toilet. 

He didn't know where his parents were. His father usually went to the pub after a row, but he might have been at A&E if the blood was his. Sometimes Severus's mother went for dinner alone at the Chinese restaurant when she was angry, but more often than not she would be gone all night if she left. They always came back, or they had so far. There would be another row, and Mam would scream and Da would cry, and then they would have sex very loudly in their bedroom. 

His heart was pounding as he screwed the top back on the whisky bottle. He could feel the pulse of it in his throat and in his fingertips. His stomach hurt very badly. He tipped the bottle back and forth to get the dark streaks off the sides, and then he put it back in the cupboard. He stared at it for a moment, trying to think if he'd forgotten anything. 

The dish towel had to go. He took it out back to the alley, where he stuffed it into the neighbour's dustbin. It was wet out, and his socks were soaked through by the time he darted back into the kitchen. 

He washed his hands three times in the sink and then rummaged through the cupboards until he found some crackers, which he spread with margarine and ate, thinking it might make his stomach feel better. He put the chicken in the refrigerator in case it could be salvaged, and then he looked at the blood on the floor, wondering if he should clean it up. His mother might be cross with him if he didn't, but she also might feel sorry when she saw it and make him a fry-up for breakfast tomorrow.

After some thought, he decided to leave it.

* * *

"Waiting on a girl?"

Severus raised an eyebrow. He was leaning against a wall outside the newsagent's, having already been refused the purchase of a pack of fags and hoping to convince someone else to buy them on his behalf.

The man who had asked the question was tall and blond and somewhere near his father's age. He looked halfway familiar. If Severus had known him four years ago, the connection was forgotten, but he thought he might have seen him in the neighbourhood last Christmas, when he had come home for a trial visit prior to his release. 

"I mean," the man said, growing flustered by Severus's silence, as though he had told a joke badly, "I see a young lad hanging about, there's got to be a girl somewhere running late."

Severus watched the man jam his hands awkwardly into his pockets and then understood. It was a funny thing, really. He knew he was ugly, and at fifteen, he hoped he was in as awkward a stage as he was ever going to get. He was skinny and pale, and he had spots on his cheeks and a nose that was three times bigger than it needed to be. Yet there was apparently something about him that advertised the fact that he was willing to suck cock—and moreover, something that made certain men want to take him up on the offer. 

He wondered idly if it was his hair, which he wore long out of forgetfulness more than rebellion. Haircuts had not been mandatory at St. Brutus's. Professor Dumbledore believed in appropriate creative expression. 

Severus looked the man over. He wasn't bad-looking, in a Cokeworth sort of way: broad shoulders, built like he might still play football in the weekend league despite a soft stomach, and wearing a smart coat. He didn't look dangerous either. He looked stupid, in the way those certain men looked when they thought they might get sex.

"What's your name?" Severus asked.

The man hesitated. "Ray."

"A pleasure to meet you, Ray. Are you going in there?" He nodded towards the door of the newsagent's and took a 50p coin from his pocket. 

"Yeah," Ray said, looking slightly confused. "Want something?"

Severus had intended to ask for a pack of Player's, but he changed his tack. They were talking about girls, it seemed. That was the game. 

"A copy of _Mayfair_ if they have it," he said, passing over the coin.

He only knew the title because the magazine would occasionally make it into the senior school back at St. Brutus's and trickle its way down, usually in disassembled pieces, into the upper levels of the junior school. He didn't expect there were any resale opportunities on the outside, but he was curious to see what the man would do. 

Ray licked his lips nervously and looked Severus over too. "You're not too young to buy one yourself, are you?"

The question was a trap, but Severus was accustomed to those. "They know my mam in there."

"Right," Ray said, obviously choosing to believe that meant Severus was over sixteen, perhaps even eighteen and most of the way to legal. "All right. Hang on a mo'."

Severus waited. The vague but constant feeling of illness he'd had since returning home gave way to an excited tension. He wondered if Ray had a car. Suddenly, the day seemed full of promise.

Barely a minute passed and then Ray returned, holding a magazine in a paper bag under his arm. He didn't look to have bought anything else, and he was walking slightly too fast. The bag was handed over, and to Severus's pleasant surprise, so was his 50p. 

"You were a bit short," Ray said. "My treat."

Severus smiled. He didn't bother to make it a genuine one, but it did the job anyhow.

Ray cleared his throat. "Your mam wouldn't like to catch you reading that."

"She'd kill me," Severus said obligingly.

That was how he ended up with the generous offer to read his dirty magazine at Ray's, where there were no uptight mothers to interrupt. Ray's house proved to be only a short walk away, over at the nicer end of Miller Lane. They walked up to the front door in silence, and Ray looked about cautiously before letting him in.

The door was locked firmly behind them once they had stepped inside. Severus looked at Ray's hand on the latch—at his square gold wedding ring—and then at the assortment of shoes and coats in the entranceway. The house was laid out identically to Severus's own, but it was cleaner and brighter and had the careful, uncomfortable air that came with standing empty in the middle of the day. No one else was home, and obviously no one was expected home for some time.

"Do you want something to drink?" Ray asked, touching his back for an instant.

Severus shook his head. "I don't drink."

What he really wanted to do was have a look around. After four years at St. Brutus's, it hardly seemed possible that he was inside a stranger's house without any real supervision. He slipped off his shoes and took a tour of the sitting room. The photographs on the mantel showed a woman who likewise looked familiar, and a girl who was younger than him, and a boy who was older. They were flanked by a football trophy and a framed school prize for penmanship.

A teacup sat on top of the telly, and a newspaper was spread messily across the table, at odds with the tidy surroundings. It was eleven o'clock in the morning on a Monday, which seemed a funny time for a man to be home. Severus wondered if Ray was one of the workers made redundant at the mill.

"Are you Toby's boy?" Ray asked suddenly. 

Severus froze for an instant. Then he turned around, his hands sliding out of his pockets and three thoughts crossing his mind in quick succession. 

The first was that it would serve his father right to know that he was picking up strange men outside the newsagent's. 

The second was that the courts would think it would serve _him_ right to be sent to Grimmauld Children's Home. 

The third was that no one else was home, and no one knew he was here. 

Ray looked flustered again. "Just thought you looked a bit like him, that's all. I know he's got a son, goes to some public school."

Severus held his stare, and amusingly, Ray took a step back. His jolt of worry faded. He had never really thought about what his parents had told people. Honestly, it had never occurred to him that anyone would notice he was gone. Public school—that would have been his mother's idea. He liked it, he decided, and smiled blandly. 

Ray seemed to take the hint and shut his mouth. 

With an expectant arch of his eyebrows, Severus sat down on the sofa and took the magazine out of its bag. The pretty girl on the cover gazed up at him, her shirt open and her lips parted. He flipped idly through the pages, surprised to discover that there were actually articles in between the photographs. 

His prick hardened almost immediately, although he didn't know if it was from the shadows of spread legs or the way the magazine reminded him of the dark dormitory and the sounds of crinkling paper and frantic wanking or the way the sofa sagged when Ray sat down very close beside him. Ray smelled good, like shaving lotion and tobacco, and he was breathing heavily. His arm curled over the back of the sofa, his fingertips brushing Severus's shoulder. 

No one else was here and no one knew he was here, he thought again. A blow to the head. A kitchen knife that almost certainly resided in the same drawer as at home. His posture eased, and he spread his legs apart. As far as getting away with something was concerned, he supposed the lesser crime of having his prick sucked would suffice for now.

* * *

Severus might have forgotten entirely about the poisoned bottle of whisky were it not for the rash on his fingers that lingered for days after he had touched the berries. As it was, he was still confused when he woke in the night to the sound of his parents quarrelling. This was nothing new in and of itself, for his parents stayed up later than he did and often ended up having a row after he had already gone to sleep. Yet there was an unfamiliar tone to the exchange that brought him fully awake. 

"How much did you drink?" his mother was saying again and again, her voice strangely urgent.

His father's response was slurred. Severus couldn't make out the words.

"That's it—I'm ringing an ambulance. God help me if you're only pissed. Do you hear me, Toby? If it comes out you're only pissed, I'm changing the locks."

Severus sat up in his bed. The stairs creaked under his mother's rapid footsteps as she ran downstairs to the telephone. He could hear the quick turn and click of the dial. There was an odd thump in his parents' bedroom, like someone falling out of bed. He wanted to go see, but he thought it was safer to stay in his room. His mother's muffled words were low and fast, and then she ran upstairs again and let out a little cry at whatever she found in the bedroom. 

All was quiet for a very long time, save for the pounding of Severus's heartbeat. Then the siren came, just like on telly.

He could hear the neighbours wake up on the other side of the wall. The siren grew louder and louder until it seemed to pierce the house, and then it finally stopped. A moment later there was a sharp knock at the door. Severus jumped. His mother ran downstairs, and soon the house was full of jumbled footsteps and loud voices asking firm questions. 

"Sir?" someone was saying across the hall. "Sir, can you hear me?"

Light poured in as his door was thrown open. Severus squinted, shielding his eyes.

"Your father's not well," his mother said shortly. "We're going to A&E. I'll ring when we know more."

She sounded upset. Severus's heart beat even harder. His mouth was very dry. 

Several sets of feet thundered down the stairs, and then his mother and father and the ambulance men were gone. The front door slammed shut. He waited to see if anyone would lock it, but they didn't. A moment later, he could hear the ambulance doors slamming shut too, and then it set off without whooping its sirens again, and then it was gone.

Silence returned, but Severus did not go back to sleep that night.

* * *

"I'll walk you back," Filch murmured in his ear. "Just let me find my trousers."

Severus hummed in response, not in any particular hurry to get up. He was lying under the warm blankets and the firm weight of Filch's arm, not really falling asleep but breathing slowly with his eyes shut. The bedroom was dark and quiet and smelled of sweat and petroleum jelly. He had just come, and he was pleasantly sore from being buggered for what had felt like an awfully long time.

They could only fuck in Filch's rooms on the weekends that Professor Binns had off. He lived in the rooms next door, and even though he was deaf as stone, it still made Filch nervous. They had to make do in the metalwork shop otherwise, which was heavily insulated and next to the boiler room, but although Severus could be as loud as he liked in there, it was no comparison to a big soft bed and a fire. 

Filch still hadn't got up to retrieve his trousers. He was rubbing Severus's back now, his hand moving in lazy circles. His breathing was heavy and slow. 

"Don't fall asleep," Filch said, sounding as if he were halfway there himself.

"I'm not." Severus frowned, his eyes still shut, and he kicked Filch sideways in the shin.

Filch snorted and gave him a little shove.

Severus's mood turned abruptly. He sat up, his stomach suddenly uneasy. It wasn't annoyance, exactly—the shove had hardly been more than a tap—but it was unpleasant nonetheless. He frowned, gooseflesh springing up on his arms and legs. The room wasn't as warm on this side of the blankets, and he was torn between getting dressed or climbing back under the covers.

Filch groped for him, trying to pull him back down and then making do with looping an arm around his waist. "All right?" 

Not for the first time, Severus thought quietly about killing him.

The urge was a funny one, and it seized him at the oddest moments. It had nothing to do with anger or with boredom. There were more entertaining things to do with Filch when he was angry or bored than hurt him physically. There was at least a little logic to the inclination. If he left school and became wealthy and well-known, as was his plan, then Filch would become an untidy loose end. Yet that wasn't entirely convincing. Filch didn't have the imagination for blackmail, and he would probably rather kill himself than face the scandal of everyone knowing he had fucked a student. He seemed to actually care about his job. Severus would do just as well to pay him off.

This was a more confusing desire, one that sat somewhere in his chest instead of in his brain or the pit of his stomach where the rage always started. He had seen a film once when he was younger in which some sort of pirate, or maybe it had been a foreign king, went and booby-trapped his treasure store so that no one else could have it when he was gone. The image of churning rocks and sand unfolded in Severus's mind, and then the image of someone running frantically ahead of the cave-in as the earth turned itself inside out. 

He had been the one to discover the usefulness of sleeping with the caretaker. He had put in all the surprisingly hard work of seducing him, and it didn't seem fair to let someone else usurp the fruits of his labour. The thought of someone else having Filch after him was...unpleasant. Like someone else wearing his pants.

"I'm fine," he said, the gooseflesh prickling painfully and his nipples tight.

He would have to get back to his room soon if he wanted Reg to believe he was only on patrol for students out of bed. Reg wasn't entirely as gormless as he looked. Yet he lay back down for a moment to warm himself in the blankets, and on a whim, he placed his hand flat upon Filch's chest. His hand rose and fell along with Filch's breathing, and then his fingers dug in slightly, pressing flesh against bone and feeling the blood course from the twitching muscle hidden away underneath. 

Filch smoothed his hair back and kissed him on the forehead. Then he squeezed Severus's hip guilelessly before rolling over to pick up his trousers from where they lay on the bedside floor. The ache in Severus's lungs eased as he breathed out slowly and put the thought of his hands around Filch's throat away for the night. 

It wasn't, he suspected, an entirely rational thing to want to do.


End file.
